GM Fort Wayne Assembly Ranks Fifth in EPA Onsite Renewables Challenge

The United States Environmental Protection Agency announced that General Motors’ Fort Wayne Assembly Plant ranks fifth among its top 30 generators of onsite green power. Fort Wayne Assembly derives 43% of its power from methane gas naturally captured from a nearby landfill, resulting in 53 million kilowatt hours of green power—roughly enough to supply 5,000 average American households with power annually.

“Renewable energy enables us to reduce risk at our plants and save money on energy costs—facts that prove there’s economic opportunity in addressing climate change,” said Rob Threlkeld, GM global manager of renewable energy. “None of our U.S. plants use coal as an energy source.”

Fort Wayne Assembly is very much a leader in the pursuit of cleaner manufacturing practices. The plant has used landfill gas for 13 years and, in 2013, the addition of electric-generation equipment increased the amount of energy supplied by methane four-fold. Fort Wayne is also a landfill-free facility, meaning that all waste used in daily operations is repurposed in order to create more energy.

“EPA applauds General Motors for using green power and for taking a leadership position on the environment,” said James Critchfield, director of the Green Power Partnership. “Green power use can be one of the easiest ways for an organization to address its carbon footprint and to reduce the environmental impacts associated with conventional electricity generation.”